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Concept cars are often amazing, as gifted engineers are given free reign to create a car that could never realistically succeed on the open market. Concept cars tend to take a particular concept or ideal and blow it out of all proportion, becoming too expensive, specialized, or downright impractical for the vast majority of car buyers. Still, even if only one model is ever actually made, these cars can have a big effect on the industry, showing companies and consumers alike just what can be accomplished when we set our minds to it. Toned-down versions of innovative concepts often make their way into more conventional vehicles, and we should definitely hope that turns out to be the case for a new concept car from Mercedes-Benz. The curvy masterpiece, called the Vision G-Code, is covered in special multi-voltaic paint that can generate fuel from both solar and wind energy.

Notice, the paint generates fuel rather than electricity — the Vision G-Code is powered by both a conventional electric motor and a super-charged hydrogen combustion engine. The electric motor powers the back wheels, charged by conventional means as well as an array of kinetic generators in the car’s brakes and shock-absorbers. The hydrogen motor concerns itself with the front wheels, and burns the fuel to improve energy efficiency while producing nothing but water as an emissions product. What makes this odd hybrid truly revolutionary is that this hydrogen fuel need not be purchased from expensive and poorly placed gas stations, but is created on the fly by the paint job.

Sleek lines and a surprisingly un-tacky wrap around windshield are just aesthetic touches on this rolling science experiment.

Paint-on solar technology has been coming for quite some time, but the amount of power these paints could generate has always been very low. Now, by combining cutting-edge thin-film solar technology with wind power, Mercedes can bypass direct battery charging and create hydrogen fuel to assist that battery. But wind power has traditionally been all about blocking the wind and generating power with out of the pressure this creates, but we obviously don’t want our modern, streamlined supercar to be covered with wind vanes that reduce mileage — how does this work?

Mercedes-Benz’s multi-voltaic silver paint manages to incorporate electrostatic wind generation into the paint-on solar cell. This means that just the movement of wind over the car’s body (only when stationary) will create a charge the car can use for hydrogen production. This means that as you roll up to a red light your brakes and front shock absorbers are helping to charge your rear-wheel batteries, and once you stop the wind is helping to create hydrogen to assist them — and more fuel is coming from solar energy during the whole process.

The inclusion of an electric engine seems to be an implicit acceptance of two facts: that the hydrogen production scheme on display here can’t meet a driver’s full needs, and that outside sources of hydrogen are still inadequate. The whole thing is designed to be synergistic; producing the hydrogen fuel creates oxygen gas as a byproduct, which can be pumped into the car’s interior. Burning the hydrogen fuel creates water as a byproduct — which could be ferried back to storage for electrolysis into more hydrogen. Whether you’re accelerating, braking, turning, or idling, the Vision G-Code is doing something to improve your use of energy.

This high-performance sportscar runs off a hydrogen fuel cell — when you can get a hold of it, hydrogen can be a very powerful fuel indeed.

As stated above, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see a Vision G-Code hit the market, but the ideas on display could be applied very widely. Even leaving aside the hydrogen fuel aspect, the extensive use of passive generation technology could and should make its way into every car on the market. And, depending on the costs, durability, and physical resilience of the multi-voltaic paint, it could end up being revolutionary indeed. There are no hard figures as to how much fuel is actually produced, and thus no word on how much of a difference this paint really makes, but even if it only cuts 10% off your car’s monthly electrical draw, it could end up paying for itself fairly quickly.

If we don’t want to experience huge energy shortfalls in the near future, we’ll need either revolutionary new energy generation technology or revolutionary new energy saving technology, or both. The G-Code could provide some very real progress toward the second goal — we’ll see how much actually gets realized in the end.

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I don’t understand why some car manufacturers are so keen to make hydrogen work, despite being an order of magnitude more expensive to set-up hydrogen networks than solar powered electric charging networks, while also costing the drivers slightly less than gas, but much more than electric (from solar powered chargers).

It must be because they don’t like that full-electric is too disruptive for them. But hybrids will at best be transitional technology. Full electric is the future.

Brian Benghazi Piper

Until you realize electricity is more expensive than gasoline.

eonvee375

youre one of those who still thinks that electricity comes from fossil fuel? so cute… ^^

dc

For the most part electricity does come from fossil fuel, unless you live in area with hydro-electric or nuclear. Even areas with significant geo-thermal, wind and solar still get a large part of the energy from coal, natural gas or oil all of which are fossil fuels. Most of the world’s electricity production comes from coal.

RBH

All very true, but if you only look at new generation installation then it is clear that coal will not hold its dominant position forever. The cost of solar is dropping so quickly that there will come a tipping point where people will simply stop using traditional sources of energy because it will be ‘too expensive’.

dc

Long way off. Even when solar becomes cheaper than coal, there is still the issue of energy storage for night time use, which isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon.

AdamWL

A solution to that problem is already being worked on. One reason why solar, wind, hydrogen power sources cost alot is because they are still fairly new and aren’t processed as much as coals. When natural fossil fuels deplete to dangerous levels we will need to switch.

Costwise its definitely not a long way off. We see exponential decrease in cost per unit of solar cells and steadily increase in yield efficiency.

And actually vanadium based battery systems can be scaled infinitely, in addition to having ability to last 20 years of discharge and recharge cycles (comparable life time of solar cells themselves). It is increasingly being used as a grid energy storage system for solar parks.

eonvee375

sorry i was speaking from Universes POV

so technically nature disagrees with our monkey methods ^^

edit: people tend to forget that the world is bigger than just the earth

Zunalter

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Maybe it isn’t a panacea today, but when we find a way to harness it efficiently, it is going to be awesome.

Also, coal still accounts for 39% of US electricity generation, and Natural Gas 27%, so for the US anyway, your “electric” car is still burning fossil fuels regardless of what is coming out of your tailpipe.

a j

yes, you have a good point ,however,although hydrogen is available ,it is still dangerous element to deal with..

Zunalter

Agreed, but I think it is a worthy area of research to achieve our long term power goals.

Free hydrogen exists only in space, in Earth none of it exists, it is always bound to other molecules because it is highly unstable. So that point of your is only valid for space travel, where we could gain access to various abundant hydrogen sources. Producing it in Earth has always been very inefficient, having always required more energy to produce it than the energy it gives back. In other words it has no positive effect on the environment, the insane energy required for hydrogen production pollutes more than natural gas.

If a way is discovered to spend 40 or 50 Watts of energy to produce 100 Watts worth of hydrogen I will be all for it.

omgwtfbbqhax1

Fuels are chemical storage form of energy. Inevitable it ALWAYS takes more energy to create energy storage forms (i.e. fuels). First law of thermdynamics make it impossible to spend 40~50 watts of energy to produce 100 watts of any fuel. Only FREE ‘fuel’ on Earth – that is fuel that takes produces more energy than it takes to extract or create – are fossil fuels

Fortunately in the future, wide spread use of photovoltaic technology will give humans near unlimited source of energy in form of electricity. The challenge is to convert that electrical energy into chemical energy in form of drop in transportation fuel. In that case, spending 100 watts of electricity to produce lesser watts of fuels in form of chemical storage isn’t of any issue, although ideally higher efficiencies are always preferred. Hydrogen just happens to be the combustible fuel that you can make most easily (electrolysis of water), with highest efficiency.

Although personal transportation vehicles can always be converted to purely electric (expect all electric vehicle fleets by 2050), certain forms of transportation such as planes require much higher power and thrust than what electrical motors can generate. So transportation fuel will always be required. However it is unsafe to use hydrogen for aircrafts, in addition to gaseous fuels having problem of storage. So an alternative, and preferably liquid, fuel must be found

RandomThis

“Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe” – true, estimates are around 3/4 of the mass in the universe, but this doesn’t really have anything to do with hydrogen-powered cars on earth. Down here H makes up much less than 1% of both the atmosphere and the earth itself.

Zunalter

Never claimed it was production ready, just thought it a worthy area of research.

RandomThis

Definitely a worthy area of research, although not as an automobile energy source. There are too many obstacles to overcome for mass market adoption to be feasible. It would be much more cost-effective to find better ways of generating electicity.

AdamWL

Well that depends on if the car is a hybrid or full electric. For instance Tesla’s don’t have tale pipes.

Zunalter

Not as a feature on the cars themselves, no. However, the point was that if you are getting your electricity from a coal-fired power plant, you can high-five yourself for your eco-consciousness all you want when driving around an EV or Hybrid, your “tailpipe” has just moved from the back of your car to the smokestack of your electric plant. And, try as you might to deny it (out of sight out of mind), you are still a part of the problem. And, until they figure out a good way to dispose of those Li Batteries, perhaps even a larger part.

RBH

In my opinion it’s because it’s a legacy technology. It once had its moment in the sun when it was going to be THE solution and a lot of R&D went into it and while technology has all but left it behind, there are a few hangers on who built their careers on it and won’t let it die because somehow they’ve hooked a secure form of R&D welfare.

Hydrogen may be abundant but it has never been able to break through the related issues of storage density / safety for use in vehicles. In another 5 years we won’t be hearing anything further on hydrogen in cars – the trajectory of various battery tech c/w electric propulsion will just leave it behind.

Ronald Gillespie

Or the Oil Companies will buy the technology up and bury it.

RBH

Never ascribe to conspiracy what can easily be explained by laziness, greed or incompetence – or in this case just not practical

TmH

YOU CAN CREATE HYDROGEN AND FUEL YOUR VEHICLE AT HOME.
ELECTRICITY OR NATURAL GAS.

Ronald Gillespie

One word. Batteries, they cost so much as well as store and supply so little. Hydrogen is one of the most common elements in the universe. Batteries are heavy, cost is high and currently after their life cycle produce nasty waste by products. By product of burning hydrogen is water, pure clean…..Imagine selling bottled pure car water…lol… Sounds silly but in a desert country or a heavily polluted wasteland….

zn

To create useable hydrogen you need lots of electricity, and unless you’re using wind, solar, hydro to produce it, then you’re actually creating a lot of pollution for a supposedly clean fuel.

Daniel Glass

Hydrogen needs heavy high pressure tanks or complex, expensive fuel cells, special pressurized storage tanks and pumps, special tanks or pipelines to haul from splitting plants to pumps, completely new facilities to split the hydrogen, and a lot more energy being put into it than you get out of it.
While EVs/transitional hybrids that use a high-efficiency ICE as an electrical generator can tap directly into the pre-existing power grid and run completely clean and on a fraction of the actual energy it takes to operate an H2 engine. The hydrogen economy is a pipe dream based on goofy ideas of what it means to be “green.”

Mopey

You do realize that hydrogen is being produced in mass quantities already, as part of oil refining. Making hydrogen is not that novel. Fuel cells have dropped in price by 90% over the last 10 years. And any “high efficiency” ICE is still much less efficient than a fuel cell.

Stop drinking the Musk-aid and parrot the battery only talking points.

Daniel Glass

There’s still no infrastructure to move and store hydrogen for public use while the power grid is everywhere, so it’s still a massive capital expense over battery-based systems, and you still lose more energy into a hydrogen system than is put into it.

“is created on the fly by the paint job” would love to know more about how that works if anyone has a link.

Terry Peterson

I wonder why the car must be stopped for the wind generation to work…? Doesn’t that seem to defeat the purpose?

Michael Miller

Microsoft just opened their Wyoming data center more than fully powered using biogas from a local wastewater treatment plant and using fuel cell technology… In my opinion this is where the hydrogen infrastructure is coming from and its happening faster than any of us think! Pretty smart for Microsoft… Now when the grid fails it does not compound the problems with a data center failure also. Off grid! So instead of producing electricity for the data center these wastewater plants will produce hydrogen for auto fill ups. They are located everywhere!

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